Director, Technical Program Management

WHAT YOU'LL DO

Organizational Leadership

• Lead, mentor, and grow a team of 2–4 TPMs, setting a high bar for program ownership, communication, and technical credibility.

• Define the TPM team's operating model — how programs are staffed, governed, escalated, and reported — and evolve it as the organization scales.

• Act as the senior-most TPM voice in leadership forums, representing program health, risk posture, and execution capacity to the CTO, SVP of Engineering and cross-functional peers.

• Drive hiring decisions, performance development, and career growth for the TPM team.

Program Strategy & Execution

• Own the end-to-end program execution strategy for the technology organization's most complex, cross-functional initiatives — from annual planning through delivery.

• Define and enforce program governance frameworks: scope, milestones, dependency management, risk registers, and earned value tracking.

• Partner with Engineering, Product, and Data Science leadership to align program roadmaps with business priorities, capacity constraints, and strategic objectives.

• Drive the shift from bespoke, one-off execution to scalable, repeatable program infrastructure — ensuring teams build for hundreds of integrations, not one at a time.

• Personally lead the highest-stakes programs when complexity, risk, or organizational span demands senior TPM ownership.

Cross-functional Influence & Stakeholder Management

• Operate as a credible peer to VPs and Sr. Directors — not just a coordinator, but a strategic partner with a clear point of view on tradeoffs, priorities, and risk.

• Communicate program status, risks, and strategic dependencies to the CTO,SVP of Engineering and executive leadership with clarity, precision, and appropriate urgency.

• Build and maintain alignment across Engineering, Product, Legal, Data, and Operations on programs that cut across organizational boundaries.

• Surface and resolve cross-functional blockers that cannot be handled at the team level — escalating with a recommended resolution, not just a flag.

Process, Tooling & Governance

• Use of AI tools and skills for acceleration of automations from the perspective of TPM artifacts. Claude / Gemini / Cursor / Codex preferred 

• Establish and continuously improve the standard TPM toolkit: program templates, RAID frameworks, status reporting cadences, and planning rituals.

• Champion Agile and scaled Agile (SAFe) practices across engineering teams, partnering with Engineering Managers to ensure methodology serves delivery — not the other way around.

• Ensure programs reflect regulatory and compliance requirements (GDPR, CCPA, privacy-by-design) as first-class planning inputs, not afterthoughts.

• Stay current on industry trends in ad tech, programmatic advertising, and digital measurement — bringing external perspective into internal planning.

WHO YOU ARE

• 10+ years of experience in technical program management, with at least 5+ years in a senior or lead TPM role.

• Demonstrated experience managing and developing a team of TPMs — hiring, coaching, setting standards, and building a high-performance culture.

• Deep domain expertise in ad tech — including programmatic advertising, audience data platforms, measurement and attribution solutions, identity, and/or data product delivery. This is a hard requirement; candidates without ad tech context will not be considered.

• Proven track record operating as a peer to VPs and Sr. Directors — influencing strategic decisions, representing program risk at the executive level, and driving alignment across senior leadership.

• Expertise in Agile, Scrum, and SAFe methodologies with hands-on experience driving adoption across engineering organizations.

• Strong command of program governance: earned value metrics, dependency management, risk mitigation, and structured escalation frameworks.

• Exceptional written and verbal communication — able to adapt from engineering deep-dives to executive briefings without losing precision or credibility.

• Experience managing programs that span regulatory or compliance constraints (GDPR, CCPA, or similar privacy frameworks).

• Background in software engineering, computer science, or a related technical field — prior hands-on engineering experience gives strong credibility with technical teams.

• Experience with cloud-based data platforms, big data technologies, and/or real-time data pipeline infrastructure.

• Familiarity with ACR (Automatic Content Recognition), connected TV data, or OEM-level data collection.

• Experience managing TPM functions during periods of rapid organizational growth, M&A integration, or geographic expansion.

• MBA or advanced technical degree — valued but not required where equivalent experience is clear.